Düsseldorf – Malediven Airbus A330 Cockpit View

Every airplane is different. Unlike learning to drive a car, you can’t just hop from one plane to another. A pilot needs familiarization (and in some cases, a whole new type of license) to fly a different kind of plane. Some are piston-powered; some are jet-powered. Some have electrically-driven controls; some are hydraulically-driven. Some have emergency oxygen; some don’t. And so on. All the switches, dials, and knobs in the cockpit control the various aircraft systems, and every aircraft has different systems.

The two main displays in front of the pilot are the PFD (primary flight display; left) and ND (navigational display; right). The pilot and copilot each have a set, and there is a pair of shared DUs (display units) in the center (arranged top-and-bottom). Each can independently display one of a few different screens of information. In the above picture, the top DU is showing engine information and the bottom DU is blank.

The information shown on the PFD is the airspeed tape (left side), the attitude indicator (center — shows the sky and ground pictorially), the altitude tape (right side), and the rate-of-climb indicator (far right). Along the top, the current autopilot mode is shown (autopilot is currently off). On the bottom is the heading indicator. The yellow text are some warnings and the green text is the altimeter setting (more on that later). The purple text is the autopilot speed and altitude settings (more on that later too).